Christopher Cockerell, Inventor Of Hovercraft

Christopher Cockerell, a British engineer who turned a couple of tin cans rigged to a vacuum cleaner into the hovercraft, one of the century's more eccentric modes of transportation, has died.

Mr. Cockerell, whose death Tuesday at his Southhampton home coincided with the 40th anniversary of his invention's first launch, was 88.

Nicknamed the British Flying Saucer because it resembled a giant saucepan lid, the hovercraft moves across land or water on a cushion of air. When it was launched on the English Channel in 1959, it was ballyhooed as the preferred mode for water crossings.

The hovercraft never fulfilled the potential that Mr. Cockerell had envisioned, however: It was noisy, unreliable and nauseated passengers in rough seas.

But, as a recent Times of London article noted, it is a stubborn vehicle that has "steadfastly refused to do the decent thing and disappear altogether," kept alive by hovercraft hobbyists whose enthusiasm approaches cult fervor.

Mr. Cockerell was born June 6, 1910, and was educated in private schools. He was trained in engineering at Cambridge University, then got a job with the electrical company Marconi.

After World War II, he left Marconi to build tourist boats in Norfolk in eastern England. Mr. Cockerell theorized that if he could pump air under a vessel through a narrow slot that ran around it, the air would flow toward the vessel's center. He thought this system, which became known as a peripheral jet, would allow the boat to hover on a cushion of air.

To test his theory, he raided his wife's pantry for a coffee tin and a can of cat food and hooked them up to a reverse-flow vacuum that fed air into the tins through a hole in the base. He suspended the contraption over the weighing pan of a pair of kitchen scales. When he switched the apparatus on, it was buoyed up on the invisible pillow of air.

He filed for a patent in late 1955 and the next year formed Hovercraft Ltd. In 1959, he launched the first practical air-cushion vehicle. It had a rubber skirt that helped to contain the air cushion over rough ground or water.

This prototype crossed the English Channel in June 1959. It had a top speed of 10 mph and could not negotiate waves of more than 18 inches or land obstacles taller than a foot.

Nonetheless, the successful crossing sparked interest around the world. Manufacturing began in the United States, Japan, Sweden and France, as well as in Britain. Commercial service in Britain started in the early 1960s.

About 5,000 to 10,000 Hovercraft are in operation in the United States, used mainly for ice and flood rescues and recreation.